Well folks, Sarah went and done it.  She went and became a   teenager this week.  THIRTEEN YEARS OLD!!! 

Here she is with her Grandma Gazdik.  She loves us all so much, we always get birthday parties at her house!  We had great fun Monday night celebrating Sarah’s upcoming big arrival into the teen years!

No matter how old she gets, I still see this whenever she laughs:Is that not the sweetest smile, EVER????  Thirteen or three, I sure love that little girl, even though the calendar says she is now thirteen!  I am not sure how that happened!

We celebrated Sarah’s birthday on Monday because Grandma and Grandpa were leaving on Wednesday to head east and see the Gazdik cousins in Ohio!  (It’s only fair that we share every once in a while, I suppose!)  Also, Kevin had to go to Atlanta this weekend for the AAMFT conference.  (This is funny, because that is exactly where he was thirteen years ago, too!  My mom came and stayed with me while he was gone and Sarah was nice enough to wait to be born until he got back.  That’s Sarah for you, though!  Always thinking of others!)

Before Kevin left, we had two soccer games and various and sundry music lessons and church activities.  On Tuesday afternoon, I even made it out to Spanish Fork to see Sarah play in one of her tennis matches!  She lost.  :(  But it was fun to see her play!  Her friends who don’t play on the team think it is pretty fun, too, as they seem to always find a way to tag along and come watch! 

Kevin left Thursday morning.  No sprained ankle this time, though, and the kids helped a lot.  I took Ben to the doctor for his four-month shots this week.  That’s only a month and a half late!  Not bad, really.  It was kind of funny, though, because the doctor and nurses kept saying, “He is so strong for a four-month old!”  I had to keep reminding them, “Well, he’s really not four months anymore . . .”  As long as I know what is going on, I suppose all is well.

Things went fairly smoothly while Kevin was gone, I even got to go to a game night on Friday night with some very fun women in the neighborhood.  How nice it was to get some time with adults since I was missing my main man!

Saturday was Sarah’s birthday for real, so we got some shopping done in the morning and then I took her and her friend, Allison, to the theatre so they could see a movie.  Allison stayed the rest of the day at our house and even had French toast with us that night.  Fun times!  I think it worked out to be a pretty fun birthday afterall!

Kevin seems to have had a good time in Atlanta, as well.  He returned to us safe and sound this afternoon (Sunday) and was even happy to be surrounded by all our noise and chaos once again.  Wow!  That’s homesickness!  He reunited with a lot of old friends and colleagues and he and his young graduate-student friend were a smashing hit with their poster board presentation.  Kevin has gathered a lot of data on the effects of pornography from his website and Michael, the grad student, analyzed the data and created the poster presentation in lieu of a Master’s Thesis.  The poster title was “Assessing Trauma When Pornography Enters the Marriage.”  They had 100 handouts and they were all gone in the first 10 minutes.  Kevin said they had a constant crowd around their booth, some people returned more than once, and many people expressed their gratitude for their work.  Wow.  AAMFT wouldn’t let him present, but it sounds like they should have . . .

People often ask me what my daughters think of having a brother.  I think this picture about sums it up.

This is one little boy who does not lack female attention!  He’s been kissed by more girls than most boys can brag of in their entire lifetimes!

Ben is doing good.  He can roll now from his belly to his back.  He could probably learn to army crawl if he stayed on his belly, but he will not.  He just fusses at me.  He wants to move and grab things so he gets frustrated.  He’ll get it all too soon, I’m afraid!  He did discover his toes this week and pulled one of these cute pretzel moves:

Then, of course, everyone had to get in on the action:

  They’re all starving for motherly affection, apparently.  “Look Mom!  I can do that, too!”   Impressive!

School went better this week.  Or I should say, the after-school hours went better this week.  I moved the twins piano practicing to the mornings and made dinner while the kids were at school.  I also had Megan babysit Ben for me from 4-5 every afternoon.  Those three things made afternoons much more doable, and hence, more peaceful.  Yay!  We had time to do homework, go to soccer games Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and still have dinner together as a family.  Cool.

Megan has been a great help babysitting Ben afterschool.  I am paying her a little bit, so we have a contractual agreement.  She has more time than her other sisters right now, so it works out great.  She has taken Ben on walks and out to visit with her friends.  She’s started to get a real knack for taking care of him and I am oh, so grateful!

Savannah started back in on Cross Country this week.  She ran in her first meet on Thursday and placed 10th overall and 4th for her team.  Now if we can just get her practicing consistently, who knows what she could do?

My neighbor offered me free peaches this week.  At first I thought that I just could not do it.  But, I wanted them badly, and free is just so . . . free!  So, I decided that I would keep the kids home from school, since I could do it with their help, and it’s just one day of school, and that’s what a farmer would do, right?  Anyway, it turned out that I didn’t need to keep them home!  I just had them up early peeling, halving, pitting, and filling jars.  By 8:45 they had all three buckets done and had filled 30 quarts.  Now that is impressive.  I spent the rest of the day processing them – rotating them through the boiling water, but that I could handle on my own.  Savannah missed first period, but that was all!  It was a huge accomplishment, even if you don’t think 30 quarts is a lot.  Trust me.

The other thing we have been putting into jars is not quite so sweet.

Yes, those are grasshoppers.  Or, more specifically, those are “desert locust” according to our National Geographic for Kids magazine.  This is what Cheyenne, Calianne, and Mariah spent the weekend doing.  Actually, it was mostly Cheyenne and some Mariah.  Calianne gets very scared when the lid comes off the jar.  There are eight grasshoppers in the jar at last count.  They all have names and Cheyenne is hoping that they have babies.  Cheyenne even told me excitedly, “Lily’s stomach is getting bigger!” – which, of course, could only mean one thing . . .  The older kids look at the bugs with pity in their eyes and tried to make the younger kids feel bad about keeping them in the jar.  I had to put an end to that.  “This is what little kids do!” I told them sternly.  “They put bugs in jars!  It’s fun for them and it’s okay.  Remember, they are BUGS!”  So, now we are at a mutual understanding and life’s little joys can continue unabated.  It also made for a great visual to tell about the struggles the early settlers here had with “desert locust” and to recount the miracle of the seagulls.  All in all, I think it was a good way for them to spend the weekend!

We started the week with a trip to the park.  It was actually Monday night.  There was no school on Monday and we celebrated by doing absolutely nothing.  Actually, I sat in the yard all day in the dappled sunshine reading a book – ahh, my favorite thing to do!  We had a picnic dinner at the playground by the tennis courts.  Can you tell from this picture what a beautiful day it was!

Tuesday was back to the chaos, I mean, back to school.  I really don’t want it to be chaotic!  So far . . . I don’t know why I can’t figure it out.  I’m going to try a few things different this week and we’ll see if it’s any better.  I hope so.  Wednesday I was so mad at everyone who was messing me up, that it was truly scary.  I do not want that.  I will conquer this! (Darcy says that in Pride and Prejudice!  Of course, he doesn’t conquer it, but we won’t go into that . . .)

On the bright side, I canned tomatoes twice this week!  (That was during the relatively peaceful time while the older kids were at school).  I have time to can tomatoes on days when I don’t do laundry.  Which is weird because I never thought laundry took up that much time – but I guess it does.  I also ran twice this week – 3 miles each time and it is getting easier!

My kids are doing cool things.  Of particular note – Sarah made the tennis team!  Exciting!  So she stays after school each day for that and comes home around 4:30.  She’s getting lots of exercise and having lots of fun.

Mariah is just amazing on the soccer field!  I love to watch her!  In her Saturday game, she scored two goals right in a row.  She has a good team and they’re all starting to “get it.”  By that I mean they pass the ball to each other.

Kevin and I coached the twins in two soccer games this week.  When they got a kick in to the huddle that actually connected with the ball, we were proud – and so were they!

Bethany went poop in the potty!  (I know that might not be exciting to you, but for me . . .?) ((insert from Savannah) Just for your entertainment I will tell you that my mother is not perfect and had a hilarious typo before I fixed it. Instead of Bethany’s name in the above sentence she put Mariah's. Think about that) When she sits on the potty and nothing happens, she raises her hands in front of her and says with true perplexity, “It’s not working Mommy!”  It’s a process . . .  She continues to call Kevin and I, “Daddy-o and Mommy-o.”  It is very cute!

Kevin had a very exciting weekend, as well!  Along with a team of 10 other people, he ran 186 miles in 26 and a half hours. Yuck, huh?  :)  Just kidding. They took turns, handing off the baton as they went, two vans with 5 or 6 runners each, driving to pick up a runner and drop the next one off, starting in daylight, running through all the hours of the night, and finishing miles and miles and several mountains later where the banner finally stretched across the trail to announce the finish!

This is Kevin’s report of the event:  “By the Numbers-- 186 miles, 26 hours 23 minutes--I ran 23.28 miles, my average pace 7.97, ran for 185 minutes, climbed 1315 feet, went down 2530, burned 3425 calories, lost 5 pounds. Created great memories--thanks to a great team and everyone else for your support, especially Diane our volunteer and Margaret for sandwiches in Cedar.”

One of the cool things about the run was that Kevin got to run with our new brother-in-law, Jason, who married Diane two years ago.  He is very fast.  One of Kevin’s favorite things about the weekend was, “watching Jason fly.”  Here is a picture of the two of them at the start of the race.  Beautiful scenery, huh?  Good lookin’ men, too!

 

There were 176 teams who ran the relay and Kevin figures that they did it fast enough to have finished in the top twenty!  Whenever anyone passed a runner from another team, they called it a “kill.”  Nice, huh?  Jason got 32 kills.  (!!!!)  Kevin didn’t do so bad either with 12 kills.

Diane came up and volunteered for part of the race.  Here she is being supportive of her man!

 

Here is Kevin at the finish line holding the honorary baton that is given to every team that finishes the race.  Go Kevin B!

 

This is a picture of their whole team.  Go mighty runners!!  Yay!

And here is proof that later that day, Kevin was thinking of me:

What a sweet guy.  He came home feeling really sick and not at all sure that he had a fun time!  But, he did it.  He says it was great and horrible.  It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . . . or something like that!  He has recovered really well today though, it seems.  I had the misfortune of twisting my ankle on Saturday, so in a bizarre twist of fate, I am hobbling around and he is not?  How wonderful that his health is so good again and he could engage in such madness and live to tell the tale.  Hooray for good health!  Hooray for hanging in there until the wheel turns once again!  Hooray for Kevin!  I love you.  I love watching you fly.  :)

What a cutie!!!  These awesome clothes were found by my sister-in-law, Monica.  They say, “Ben’s Banana Stand.”  Fun, huh?  Just right for our own little monkey that we call Ben!  The big news of the week is that Ben now has two teeth!  Whoa, there, little speedster.  You are not supposed to grow up that fast!  But he is too cute to be mad at.  :)  He’s also started eating cereal two times a day.  He seems really ready for those “solid” foods!

It was a good adjustment week for us, as in, we are all adjusting better to being in school.  I actually had a couple of mornings this week that went kind of smoothly and I thought, “Hey, maybe I do remember how to get the kids off to school on time.”  Homework started and it went alright.  Piano practicing happened (mostly), Savannah started voice lessons (close enough that Savannah can walk!) and Mariah started new piano lessons with a friend a few houses down the road (Mariah’s motivated to practice again!).  It all had me a little worried, but I think it’s going to work out and that has me feeling better.  More adjusted, I must say.

Soccer is the only other variable.  Mariah is doing well in soccer and really enjoys it, so that is great.  But, I also thought the twins would have fun in soccer, so I signed them up, too, and now I am wondering what in the world I was thinking??!?  They start next week and will have two games a week for the next five weeks.  I guess they will really find out if they like it or not!  I just hope we can juggle our schedules well enough and still feel like we are parenting the whole lot of them well.  That’s all my anxiety – just success or failure at parenting all wrapped up into two crazy soccer evenings a week.  :)  Wish us all luck!

We’ve also been battling a cold virus this week.  Savannah got it first and came home from school early one day feeling dizzy and sick.  Now Sarah, Cheyenne, Calianne, and Kevin are all feeling the effects, as well as Savannah.  No fun!  Cross Country even started this week for Savannah, but she didn’t go because she is trying to kick this thing first!

Sarah has begun to really like junior high!  She is having fun and liking her classes and making new friends and hanging out with the old.  She even tried out for the tennis team last week!  We will let you know how that goes!

Megan finished her two week trial of the junior high orchestra and decided that she does like it and she is going to stay.  Yeah!  She always comes out of there happy!  I think she is going to really enjoy doing this big thing.  I am so pleased that she worked up the gumption to give it the try it needed.  Way to go Megan!  I know that wasn’t an easy thing to do.

Bethany and I are having a good time at home.  If I happen to leave a room without her noticing, I hear her in a few minutes in the other part of the house saying, “Where’s my mommy?”  When she finds me, she smiles and jumps and says, “There’s my mommy!” 

Adorable little character that she is!  I started potty training her this week and we are having some successes already.  Yay!  She is a smart little thing and fun, fun, fun to have around!